GOOD NEIGHBORING (Part 1)

“How can we become a good neighbor?”

The question seems simple enough and fairly straight forward. In fact, we might even read and pass right over it assuming we already know the answer … a “no-brainer.”

However, what we discovered as we write articles and do talks on neighboring is that this really is a good question. It’s a question we all need to ask ourselves and search deeply for good answers. Then we need to live them out in our daily life.

The problem is our society has lost sight of what good neighboring looks like as we live more and more in the extreme individualism of our times. One of the difficulties people have with the art of neighboring is that they are genuinely unsure about how to become a good neighbor. 

Over the next several months we want to highlight a few things that can help us improve our abilities to be a good neighbor. These are concepts we have developed as we talked with others who found them to be helpful for good neighboring. 

There are several steps we need to take to become a good neighbor, the type of neighbor that other people want to be around. Here are a few things we found...

• Observe - we need to develop our skills of observation so people can tell us what we need to know

• Access - we need to give people access to our lives so when the questions of life come up they can find their way to us

• Listen - it deepens and confirms the things we might have seen but were unsure of

• Share - we need to be generous with our resources such as time, food, finance, and, most importantly, the Gospel

It’s not an exhaustive list by any means. What it does do is give some healthy, broad strokes to get started with living an incarnational life, fulfilling the mission Jesus gave us. Next month we will jump into the idea of what it means to observe. For now, let’s go ahead and get started with Good Neighboring.